


Captain America's No-Good, Very Bad, Still Pretty Much Par-for-the-Course Day

by TaleWorthTelling



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Crack, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 15:26:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2656997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaleWorthTelling/pseuds/TaleWorthTelling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers is politely baffled when he's called in to Central Park on a foggy Tuesday morning to assess the situation unfolding before smartphone cameras and news crews alike.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Captain America's No-Good, Very Bad, Still Pretty Much Par-for-the-Course Day

**Author's Note:**

> This is ridiculous. I couldn't resist.

Steve Rogers is politely baffled when he's called in to Central Park on a foggy Tuesday morning to assess the situation unfolding before smartphone cameras and news crews alike.

He's wearing the suit and backup is on the way, but he was closest and, as the dispatch agent had bluntly explained, "You're the least likely to cause an explosion of international proportion."

As another agent had hastily corrected: "You're the diplomatic one."

Steve isn't sure that either one is exactly true, but he's here and he's ready to talk, if that's what this guy wants.

The guy in question is kneeling in a patch of grass, covered in dirt that it looks like he's rubbed over himself (and as Steve watches, he takes a palmful of earth and inhales deeply, which Steve decides to ignore until further information presents itself, lest not he be judged as well), and. Well.

He's weeping, really, is the only way to describe it. He's bawling his eyes out and there's one particularly long, particularly impressive snot trail hovering just a couple of inches above the ground while he sobs and sobs.

"Oh, God," he's saying. His voice is tight and breathy, almost a gasp. "What the fuck is wrong with me? Rocket, you fucker, you fucking fucker, you said this would bring me closure and then we could hunt space gold. Oh, my God, fuck."

No one's happy when they hear the word "rocket", which is a good reminder of the real reason that Steve's here. A random strangely dressed, over-emotional man in his mid-thirties is rarely startling enough to call in a whole police squad, let alone an Avenger, especially in Manhattan of all places, but there is a rather alarming caveat to this case and it's idling fifteen feet above the ground.

That's not a civilian aircraft. It's not registered anywhere on this planet. And they have no idea what's powering it.

Aliens have touched down in New York again. (Only not really, because they're hovering. Except this guy.)

No one is happy.

Steve sees the officers shifting uncomfortably and shooting each other agitated looks. Now's the time to intervene.

As he steps forward, the guy lets out another hoarse, ear-splitting wail. "Fuuuck. Groot! I'm not okay. I don't know what's happening to me. Make it stooop!"

His head falls down between his knees and his fingers dig into the soil again, pulling up blades of grass and an earthworm that slithers over his wrist and falls back down.

"Sir," he says, voice pitched low, strong, and clear. He's been told that it's his comforting, I-Am-America-And-So-Can-You voice, but that was Clint, and Clint is kind of an ass. Even Natasha says so. "Sir, excuse me. My name is Captain Steve Rogers. I'm with the Avengers. You're safe here. What is your situation, and how can I help you?"

"Fuck off, man," he sniffles, face still buried almost in his own crotch. "I'm not that much of a loser. You think I didn't have a pile of Captain America comic books sitting around before aliens abducted me? Don't be that guy."

Steve blinks. He's not sure how to proceed. The situation doesn't seem to be deteriorating, so he pauses to think, hands loose at his sides and feet planted in a dignified but approachable manner. (He's seen Clint practicing this in the mirror. He left an arrow-shaped Post-It with pointers in Clint's bathroom and he's seen noticeable improvement. He left another note last week that says, "Keep it up! S. R."

He stops abruptly, noises cutting off like they'd never been uttered, face wet but not getting wetter, snot strand snapped and receding. "Wait. Are comics still for geeks? Am I a loser?"

"No one's a loser," Steve tries. He falls back on the Cap cartoon rhetoric that he'd normally never be caught saying, let alone on film, and that his friends will give him endless shit about (not to mention the GIFs, oh God), but he's kind of at a loss here. "We all have something to offer when we try."

He spots the weapon on the guy's hip when he suddenly jerks back and his jacket flaps open.

"Sir!" he says, flipping on his cautious but stern voice. Meanwhile the guy has started sputtering. "Stay still and remain calm. Keep your hands where I can see them.

"No fucking way," he's muttering to himself. "No more Xandarian party favors. This trip should have been over before we crossed the nebula. I want my money back. No, really, who the fuck are you? You look just like my Saturday morning cartoons."

"My name is Captain Steve Rogers and you are in Manhattan, New York City, in the United States of America. On planet Earth." After a moment's hesitation, call it a hunch, he says, "The year is 2014."

"Is that a crack about my clothes being too Eighties?" He rolls his eyes. "Look, space fashion is not a pretty sight. I did what I could. Leather jackets don't come cheap once you get past Pluto. You don't even want to know what animal this is made from. I promise you, they don't have cows in space." He frowns. "I think. I'll get back to you on that. They do have some weird shit in space."

"Sir, maybe you'd like somewhere quiet to lay down."

"It's Star-Lord, okay? Star-Lord. Or ... fuck, I guess it's just Peter now. That's my terran name. Peter Quill. I was kidnapped by aliens. As a kid."

Steve is inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, having had quite the rude awakening himself just a couple of years ago, but he eyes the news crews and, more importantly, the cops, and he comes to a decision. This really cannot drag out much longer.

He slowly reaches one hand to his side, careful to keep his fingers hidden as he slides open one of the pouches on his belt and identifies the tranquilizer disc. He palms it, holding it between his fingers, and creeps toward the distraught man -- toward Quill -- while sinking into a spring-loaded crouch.

"Okay," he soothes, dropping the Captain act and trying for sincere comfort. The disorientation is genuine, whatever the story is, and Steve has a hard time not responding to that. He holds up his hands non-threateningly, careful to keep the fingers of both hands at the same level of tension so as not to telegraph his intentions. "It's okay, Peter. Whatever's going on, I'm going to get you some help."

"I don't need help," he claims, wiping what's left of his snot and tears on his not-a-cow sleeve. It doesn't do much for the dirt except to smear it around. "I need a drink. Cartoons don't buy you booze, last I checked."

Quill moves to stand, demeanor totally relaxed but hand reaching for his weapon, and that's when Steve acts, grabbing the back of Quill's neck to slip the disc into his collar and end this now. It's only a very small dose intended to subdue, not knock out, but that's really a moot point because that's when Steve's abducted by the tree.

Wait. Sorry. That's when the tree drops out of nowhere and grabs Steve.

No. Let's try that again. That's when the thick, heavy tree limb snakes out of the sky to constrict itself around Steve's wrist and --

Okay, you know what? A sentient tree yanks Steve up into the sky by his outstretched hand and it's still not the weirdest thing to happen to him. That's it. That's how he encapsulates that one moment in time.

So he's on the idling spaceship, still held captive by the tree that upon closer inspection turns out to have eyes and a mouth, when he sees the raccoon perched on the tree's shoulder. This is not a metaphor. This is his life.

Quill is also being held by the tree, but rather being cradled comfortably and deposited gently on his feet, instead of dangling by one arm with his feet six inches above the ground.

"Fuck you, Rocket," Quill says to the raccoon.

The raccoon smiles sweetly and then spits to the side.

Quill makes a disgusted noise. "Not in my ship!"

"I said that you might be emotional," the raccoon says. Rocket. Its name is Rocket. His name is Rocket? "I didn't say you'd open up like a faucet. How was I supposed to know you're a crier?"

"I'm not," Quill insists, throwing himself sulkily into a chair. "I was temporarily stricken ten years old when I set foot on the soil I haven't seen since I was _abducted by aliens at ten years old_. It was an intense moment for me."

"Yeah, yeah, woe is me, I'm a space pirate and my life is so hard." Rocket shakes his head and his fur flops from side to side. It's kind of cute.

"I hate to make this about me," Steve says, basically calm, "but you've just taken a hostage -- more to the point, you've just taken an Avenger hostage -- and my team my won't stand for this. They'll be arriving soon, if they haven't already. Why don't you touch down and we'll sort this out."

"Oh, good point," Rocket says. "Get goin', Quill. Let's get the hell out of duck."

"It's Dodge," Quill mutters, grabbing the controls and pushing buttons seemingly at random. "Get the hell out of _Dodge_."

"I'll do whichever one suits me when something comes flying at me."

They take off, this spaceship full of wildlife, shrubbery, and what appears to be an emotionally immature space pirate. And Steve. This is not what he had in mind.

He can feel that the tranquilizer is no longer between his fingers, lost somewhere between reaching for Quill and being abducted by the tree with feelings, and he's beginning to lose circulation in his fingers anyway. "You think you can let me down?"

The tree cocks what passes for its head to the best of its ability, then leans in face to face with him. "I ... am ... Groot. I am Groot." It pauses. "I am ... Groot?"

"I am Captain America," he responds, now baffled but in the slightly less polite way. "Captain ... America."

"No, you're not," Quill sing-songs from the pilot's seat, glancing back over his shoulder. "Oh, holy shit, are you?"

"What gave me away?" He can just about work his fingers out of his glove and slip out of the tree's grip, but he suspects that it would just catch him with the other hand and he'd be back where he started, only he'd probably have splinters as well. Best to keep his gloves on until he at least knows where the raccoon's been.

"I totally just remembered that I saved an entire planet mostly by myself, and my posse includes a talking raccoon-resembling creature, the galaxy's cuddliest tree, my currently-ex-girlfriend Gamora who used to be an assassin but I turned her good with the power of love only probably not really, and Drax." There's a long silence. "You'd really have to know him to get his deal. Anyway, my point is, anything's possible. I just had this weird down to earth moment and forgot. Ha, get it? Never mind. If you say you're Captain America, then why not. Can I have your autograph? Groot, chill. He knocked out Hitler over four hundred times. Show some respect."

Groot drops him on his ass.

"Actually," he says with a sigh, rubbing his wrist, "it was two hundred, and it was a stage show." He'll never live it down.

"In the comics it was four hundred. Don't test me, dude, I've got the memory of an elephant." He twists around in his seat, eyes lighting up. "Toss me some trivia questions, come on. I mean, anything before 1988. Kind of my no-go-zone."

Steve gets to his feet slowly, at a loss. What's the protocol for this?

"Wait." Quill flips a switch on the console and turns around completely. He's full of suspicion now. "Shouldn't you be old?"

"Age has become relative for me."

"I missed a lot while I was gone, then."

"I know the feeling."

They stare at each other.

"So about that autograph?"

Steve sighs again. "I don't have a pen."

"Huh."

There's another awkward silence before Groot snaps off a thin tendril of spiraling twig -- what Steve guesses is the equivalent of a finger, which is less than comforting -- and from the end drips thick, dark sap, sticky and glossy.

"Thank you, Groot," Quill says, poking around until he comes up with a piece of the strangest paper Steve's ever seen.

Steve takes the makeshift pen with the very tips of his fingers. "Doesn't that hurt?" he asks as he signs, eyeing Groot with concern.

"I _am_ Groot."

"Okay, then. Make it out to Star-Lord?"

"I don't think Captain America's that cool in the rest of the galaxy. Better make it out to Peter."

"Fair enough."

He hands back the paper and very delicately sets down the pen.

"Listen," he says, or starts to say, because then a hatch in the floor opens and a woman with green skin climbs out, followed by an extremely burly guy whose most striking feature is the look of irritation on his face.

"Are we there?" asks the woman.

"You said you would wake us when we reached your home planet," says the guy.

"You'd be Gamora," Steve says tonelessly. "And Drax."

They turn in unison toward him. "Who is this?"

"I'm Captain St--"

"It's Captain America, guys, be cool! He's on my ship!"

"Because you abducted me."

"Hey, let's not go there. Some of my best friends have kidnapped me."

"I never kidnapped you," Rocket chimes in, arms behind his head and legs crossed at the ankle.

"You threw me into a bag in the middle of a street."

"And you got away! Everyone's happy. Don't be so cynical."

"I really have to insist that you land this craft and surrender yourselves for evaluation and interrogation."

Rocket snickers.

"Listen," he begins, crossing his arms over his chest. "As near as I can tell, you haven't committed any serious crimes. Except the obvious one, of course, but I think we can settle this without charges, provided you immediately find a safe landing zone and touch down."

This time Quill joins in on the round of laughter.

Steve is losing his patience. He rolls his eyes and adjusts the spread of his feet, shifting muscles in a way that probably looks aggressive but doesn't seem to faze anyone. "You won't be laughing when you're targeted on radar and shot down. Unidentified air craft, especially of the alien variety, are taken very seriously. I don't want that kind of misunderstanding to happen, but that's not under my control."

"Your terran technology is so outdated, you wouldn't see this ship if it flew out of your pocket," Rocket brags, cracking his little knuckles in a highly disconcerting way. "How do you think we got here in the first place?"

Good point.

"'Sides, you're the one who tried to drug Peter here. I'd say you got something to answer for, too."

"He was hysterical and he reached for a weapon."

"Weapon?" Quill's eyebrows shoot up and his face scrunches in a strange combination of confusion and annoyance. Mostly annoyance. "This thing?" He grabs the weapon at his side, spins it around a few times like in the Westerns Clint has shown Steve, then puts it back on his hip. He shakes his head and reaches further down into his pocket, from which he pulls out ...

That's a cassette tape, right? One of the many inventions to come and go before Steve's reintroduction, outdated many times over by the time he opened his eyes in the new millennium.

Quill sticks it into a tape deck. Music that Steve recognizes from Sam's iPod starts to play.

"Like I said," Quill mutters, looking strangely shy now and much, much younger, "it was emotional. Very uncool."

"Oh." Some of the tension leaves Steve's shoulders, but only because Quill looks so damn pitiful, like a drenched puppy. He won't apologize for trying to make the best of a tough situation, but he stops glaring.

Quill perks up. "Is that the real shield? Can I touch it?"

Steve reaches back to touch the edge of the shield, lingering on it almost protectively. He hesitates, then takes it off of his back and slides it onto his arm. He uses his sternest possible voice, the one that grown men have told him they'd imagined as children when they'd done something wrong. "On one condition."

Quill rolls his eyes and turns back to the controls. "Fine. We land."

 


End file.
